Gold, silver, copper, palladium, and the like are included in electric boards, flexible substrates, IC chips, cellular phones, and the like. In addition, silver is included in photographic films, movie films, X-ray films, photographic papers, and the like.
Thus, recovery of the above-mentioned valuable metals is performed by using these electric boards, IC chips, cellular phones, flexible substrates, films, photographic papers, and the like as recycled raw materials in the copper refining process. For example, in the copper refining process, slug (molten body), combustion ash, or the like is obtained by feeding the recycled materials into a copper smelting furnace or by incinerating/melting them in a rotary kiln or the like. Then, the slug, combustion ash, or the like is fed into a copper smelting furnace or the like.
The transaction prices of the recycled raw materials, such as electric boards, IC chips, cellular phones, flexible substrates, film, photographic papers, and the like, are determined based on the content of the valuable metals included in the recycled raw materials.
For example, sampling apparatuses and sampling methods for automatically obtaining samples for evaluation from recycled raw materials are proposed in Patent Literatures 1 to 3 (PTLs 1 to 3).
However, there are various properties in wastes of electric boards, IC chips, cellular phones, flexible substrates, films, photographic papers, and the like, which are the recycled raw materials. Thus, occasionally, the sampling apparatuses disclosed in PTLs 1-3 cannot be used mainly due to limitation of their size surfaces. Because of this, sampling from the above-mentioned recycled raw materials has been performed manually in accordance with the procedure defined by JIS-M8100 (1992) (hereinafter, referred as “the JIS standard”)